A Season of Record Melt — Sea Ice Extent In Uncharted Territory For 94 Days

From March 25th through June 26th, sea ice extent measures, as provided by Japan’s Arctic data system were in record low ranges. In other words, for about a quarter of a year, and according to this monitor, the Arctic Ocean and its surrounding estuaries have witnessed the lowest ice coverage ever measured for any similar period since record keeping began in the 1979.

This new period of extreme sea ice record lows comes during a time of continuous decadal sea ice losses. Average sea ice coverage for each successive ten year period since the 1980s during the March through June period has fallen by about 400,000 to 500,000 square kilometers. For 2016, the new record lows widened this gap to more than 2 million square kilometers — or a surface area of sea ice coverage lost roughly equivalent the size of Greenland.

According to this 25 Alaska city composite index (provided by Climatologist Brian Brettschnieder above) every day but two through June 30 of this year saw above normal temperatures in the related regions. Yet another pretty clear indication that there’s nothing normal about Arctic or near Arctic temperatures these days.

Closer to the 2012 Line But Still in Record Low Range

All this extreme Arctic heat during Winter and Spring was probably the major contributor to new record low sea ice extents continuing for more than three months running. However, storms over the Arctic Ocean have since moderated temperatures into closer to normal ranges for June even as these weather systems’ circulatory patterns have tended to spread the ice out. As a result, rapid rates of melt slowed somewhat into June and the extent monitor has crossed the 2010 line, coming closer to the 2012 line in the JAXA measure, while flipping back and forth over the 2012 line in other major measures (NSIDC).

(Arctic storm churns through the East Siberian and Laptev seas of the Arctic Ocean on July 1 of 2016. Sea ice measures are currently near new record lows, but a steep rate of decline will be required to challenge or break with 2012. Image source: LANCE MODIS.)

The upshot is that the sea ice state during early July doesn’t look quite as bad as it did during late May and early June. Chances for a blue ocean event in which Arctic sea ice volume exceeds an 80 percent loss since the late 1970s, in which sea ice extent falls below 1.5 million square kilometers, or sea ice area falls below 1 million square kilometers seems less likely by end Summer at this time. Such an event would now likely require some rather severe Summer weather episodes including strong highs over the Central Arctic and/or very strong late summer lows pushing heavy swells into the Central Arctic Basin. That’s not to say we shouldn’t be on the lookout for strong negative sea ice departures over the next few months — which are certainly still possible. And given the current trend, 2016 remains in a position to hit near or below 2012 records by end Summer.

(Disclaimer — The views and analysis expressed in this blog are my own. The related analysis is an exploration of current trends and possible future climate states informed by my own best assessment of the science. In no way is this analysis meant to be misconstrued as an absolute authoritative final word on sea ice states. For example, we cannot say with absolute certainty that any one of the following — new record lows, blue ocean events, or a failure to hit new record lows — will happen. As such, the analysis should instead be viewed as a middle-certainty forecast informed by current trends. Further scientific opinion and informed discussion on the issue is welcome.)

251 Comments

lracine

Every morning when I flip my computer on, the first screen that comes up is the Polar Portal, Danish Arctic research institution. Data is very similar to the JAXA.

The other parameter to consider is thickness and volume… which ironically is not so bad. The last two weeks this measurement has been falling right on the middle of the “normal” curve. Go to Polar Portal DK.

I have been following climate disruption on various blogs and sites since the since autumn of 2007, after news about the amazing Arctic sea ice drop in that year. Have to say, I am consistantly amazed at the breadth and the depth of material that you handle on this blog. Outstanding source of ACD info.

Only hassle – one has to read all the comments, and follow almost all the links in comments, since your whole community is so informed and involved – lol.

Kevin Jones

JAXA currently 2.29 million sq. km.below 1980’s average. That much lost white reflective sea ice Plus that much dark heat absorbing water. I try to tell friends it is like not just removing a white shirt on a hot day but replacing it with a black one.

– Stuff like these high minimums scare me as much as anything — let alone the high temps.
No cool-down. Everything stays warm. The highs get a head start….

Ps Re: the above graph of Alaska’ temps — I repeat my comment from previous post. I have no idea if something like this is can be a chronologic harbinger of sorts — but I know that “Timing is everything.” And everything has a beginning. I’ll have to watch as latitudinal warming continues.

“Chrono wise, April was when the PNW (OR, WA, et al.) heated up and lost a tremendous amount of snow pack. A month later we see the above spike in AK.”

Jay M

just sayin’ you were jumped, just might have put a lot more maybe’s in the equator piece–no I don’t think so
this post–not interesting to the MSM
I would be totally happy if the crisis caused by the greenhouse effect is being dealt with in a timely fashion and there is no reason for an emergency. Beckworth has spoken out with his videos that are accessible, paleontologist I hear in Canada.
Best wishes

– I’ve seen a few retweets of the JS WaPo piece – some are a bit haughty. Many are AMS people. This, even as AMS forecasters have been relatively error prone as climate change impacts weather systems in erratic ways. 🙂

Not to be picky but…
Recently, I attended a AMS conference where CC or AGW was a forbidden topic yet much time and effort was devoted to discussing local sports scores, tourist destinations, weather mascots type non meteorologic trivia.

I attended it to be informed — but came away somewhat insulted and a waste of time.

Waterways and beaches along Florida’s Atlantic coast have been taken over by thick, blue-green algae blooms, prompting Florida Gov. Rick Scott to declare local states of emergency in St. Lucie, Martin, Palm Beach and Lee counties.

Residents have described the foul-smelling algae as “guacamole-thick,” “god-awful” and “a festering infected creepy mess.” One resident has complained of health problems, telling Reuters, “It is affecting all of us as far as red eyes, runny nose and the ‘in the throat’ feeling.”

Andy in SD

– Follow the nitrogen fertilizer trail – and you just may end up in Enid Oklahoma, home of “Koch Industries” aka ‘Koch Nitrogen’ and find Senator ‘Snowball’ Inhofe trying to sell you a bright green snow-cone.

A report by the nonpartisan Climate Central says that 11 million people in California are at risk of wildfire and that climate change is lengthening the wildfire season.

Previous reports by researchers have said wildfires in the western U.S. would become more intense, larger, and start earlier than usual as a result of climate change.

“This intense activity is indicative of a growing trend in Western wildfires linked to changes in climate,” the report notes. “Spring and summer temperatures have been rising across the West, and mountain snowpack has been melting earlier. Taken together, these changes are creating more days where forests and grasslands are dried out and ready to burn.”

‘A strike team is a specified combination of the same kind and type of resource (usually 5), with common communications, and a leader. Lima designates a Dozer Strike Team, Charlie designates an Engine Strike Team and Golf designates a Crew Strike Team. Rich and Donna, Dozer Support.’

geoffrey brown

The ice is looking a lot worse this year than the pure numbers let on. It is breaking up rather fast in places that it has not in past years. You can really see it on worldview if you dodge the clouds. The concentration maps really show how bad it is. The extent numbers are deceiving because there has been so much breaking up and redistribution.

Griffin

I find it disturbing that every single article about climate in mainstream media has a denier comment within the first three to five comments on the article.
It is as if every website and writer has a “commenter” assigned to them. These people have got to be paid to do what they do. I used to think I was crazy for even considering such a thing but now, I have seen too much to think otherwise.
Seriously, if I was an individual that was truly convinced that the science is all wrong, a hoax or just a bunch of crap, why would I even bother reading anything posted by Chris Mooney? Never mind taking the time to log in and make a comment. The deniers that do this, every time, I just can’t seem to believe that it is honest folks that just want others to see things as they do. So my own conclusion is that it is an organized (loosely) coalition that is actively working, every day, to spread confusion amongst an easily deceived public.
It would almost be amusing if not for the fact that delaying climate action now directly reduces the amount of time left that our climate will remain suitable for growing sufficient amounts of food to maintain a civil society.

Kevin Jones

Kevin Jones

Longtime commentator over at Arctic Sea Ice Blog, Bill Fothergill, points out that NSIDC’s Charctic graph for any given day is a five day average up to that day. Thus their reported arctic sea ice extent for July 1 is really the average from June 27 to July l. 9.398 million sq. km. Their actual day value for July 1 he provides is 9.179.

MODIS imagery appears to indicate a pretty weak and dispersed ice state. The large floating chunks in the Beaufort have been somewhat resilient, but this is probably due to the fact that a good portion of it is thick, multi year ice. Sea Surface Salinity measures in that region indicate a rather strong edge and bottom melt. All the ice on the Russia side looks pretty extraordinarily thin and vulnerable.

This time of year is a sort of race to the bottom for sea ice melt. If 2016 tracks or exceeds 2012 through the end of July, then the set up for August and September will be ‘interesting.’ Large areas of dark, open water, big waves and the potential for those hotter SSTs to interact more with the ice.

“The last ice age wasn’t one long big chill. Dozens of times temperatures abruptly rose or fell, causing all manner of ecological change. Mysteriously, ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica show that these sudden shifts—which occurred every 1500 years or so—were out of sync in the two hemispheres: When it got cold in the north, it grew warm in the south, and vice versa. Now, scientists have implicated the culprit behind those seesaws—changes to a conveyor belt of ocean currents known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).

These currents, which today drive the Gulf Stream, bring warm surface waters north and send cold, deeper waters south. But they weakened suddenly and drastically, nearly to the point of stopping, just before several periods of abrupt climate change, researchers report today in Science. In a matter of decades, temperatures plummeted in the north, as the currents brought less warmth in that direction. Meanwhile, the backlog of warm, southern waters allowed the Southern Hemisphere to heat up.

IF GS and AMOC does breakdown there is no new ice age due to currently high CO2/GHG. However, GS breakdown does increase risks for very extreme weather and localized cooling in some parts of the North Atlantic ala Hansen/ Rahmstorf/Francis.

Cate

No worries here about Independence Day. 🙂 I’m just keepin’ an eye on that old cool pool.

Btw, here’s Environment Canada’s map of SST anomalies for today, 3 July. Wicked hot water up north. Lots of cool water on the Grand Banks, also cool waters right down the eastern/central Atlantic to the Canaries, with the Gulf Stream just kind of petering out mid-Atlantic. I’m thinking this is all within the bounds of “normal” fluctuations, for the most part?.

Kevin Jones

Well dt. After reading dozens of the best books I could find and hundreds of the best peer reviewed papers in the major journals I could find and so much else, I guess I would put myself above the e in Catastrophe. I wish I couldn’t. Wonder where Gavin puts himself?

Griffin

I would venture a guess that placement on the graph is closely tied to the personal vulnerability of the commenting individual to climate disruption. Financial security tends to push the threat vector off for many. Catastrophe is most certainly a relative term. A devastating food shock would be crippling to many but a minor inconvenience to a few. I happen to feel that many scientists are not always referring to Bangladeshi fishermen when they are commenting on the severity of expected impacts.

Kevin Jones

Ha! Wouldn’t it be fun to mail the graph out to a whole bunch of scientists and other voices sane and otherwise and get them to mark where they believe they are. Then get them all back and put all on one chart.

Retweeted the graph Gavin posted. Provides a great context of the current ‘state of play.’ The thing to remember is that the mainstream science and IPCC acts as a necessary guard rail. The stuff to the right of IPCC is less certain, but represents higher potential impacts. If you explore that area you need to be willing to accept when you’re wrong, and to accept that it’s OK to screw up sometimes. And you also need to realize that it’s best to let the heavyweights make the final word on what is or is not a global climate emergency. Looking at risk is a more uncertain process. If Rahmstorf or Gavin chimes in and says — emergency — then we know that some concerns have shifted over to real-time trouble.

Paul Beckwith, in my opinion, does not have the scientific gravitas to make these claims. And, for my own part, I tend to look at indicators, ask the question, and then let the specialists/experts have the final say. If I feel a need to push back, I try to be as respectful as possible. It’s guys like Gavin and Rahmstorf and Francis and Hansen and Archer and Rignot and others who educated me on these issues in the first place.

The other thing to remember is that scientists do not hold back when tearing each other or what they consider to be a bad idea down. It is a very competitive field. So if you accidentally press the big red button, then the stuff is really going to fly.

“Provides a great context of the current ‘state of play.’
– RS
Good, Robert 🙂

– It’s good to see/hear concerned people talking about the various aspects of CC context — and being able to use some proximate references rather absolutes.
Positions may talked about a little more freely. There are so many nuances to CC and everyone’s response. Much like a swinging pendulum.

JS too easily passed judgement on RS on a subject riddled with rapidly unfolding interlocking event(s).
Who among us are error free? How often? And for how long?

WaPo is the main news source in a ‘company’ town where the ‘company’ is controlled a vengeful and reckless Republican Party, et al . (A ‘Weather Gang’ all of its own.)

RS injects much needed context into a very dangerous situation. Remedies are offered, and explored.
RS even has the audacity to sound an alarm. Imagine that! Pro bono too.
Most others stay at their weather/climate consoles reporting remotely sensed data, pass it on, then go home paycheck in hand.
Robert, in his sense of urgency, just let himself get deked in his own zone. It happens in the pros all the time. I wouldn’t say that the ‘other team’ scored either.
(Ps I talked about Robert in the third person for effect, Robert.)

Me, firmly rooted on terra firma, I’ve watched firsthand as the sky/climate/weather/atmosphere, has fractured into dozens of unpredictable unwieidly pieces.
Which I find very alarming.
And the data tickers that I depend on keep humming along…

– I did get a reply from GS. If appropriate, I will post it after I reply to his reply — for information purposes only.
(It may show up on my Tweets anyway.. 🙂
All is to stay respectful.
I think JS/WaPo failed a bit in this regard.

Nice work, DT. I’ll hazard a guess that Gavin sees himself as pretty near the top of the large hump. But, good to inquire.

I like Robert’s overview pretty well. I also like Robert’s blog, because it hits what I think is the right tone as far as level of concern is … hmm, concerned ( :), wrote myself into a corner there). Joe Romm is usually pretty good, Eric Holthaus also. I’m no scientist, but I’m over on the catastrophe end of the large hump myself, and pretty far out, too, given that the international system seems to be having a hard time getting its collective head out of its butt and concocting a serious response.

Robert, you’re definitely right about scientists whacking away, and that’s good for all of us to keep in mind. It’s not an arena for those with tender feelings, so good to take less-than-positive comments with a grain or two of salt. Comes with the territory.

Griffin

What is “catastrophe” anyway? Would that be like losing say 20% of the Great Barrier Reef in one year? Or is that just the “substantial cost” of doing business in a fossil fueled world?
We are a long way from stopping the addition of more blankets to our planetary bed and many years from realizing the true effects of the quilt we have on us now.
I would love for someone (GS?) to soothe me back into thinking that the long term effects of our actions today will not be “catastrophic”.

Mulga Mumblebrain

– It’s actually a deep orange mostly for visibility for laying it down, also as evidence of its location after application.
Most aircraft used in air attack have similar orange in their paint scheme.

Phos-chek WD881

Class A Foam is specially formulated to make water more effective for firefighting. The surfactants in Class A foam significantly reduce water’s surface tension and, when mixed with air, create a superior foam blanket that surrounds fuels with a thick layer of water. This creates a barrier between the fuel and the fire, knocking down the fire faster than water alone, and allowing fire fighters to see the areas of application. Making the water more effective reduces the amount of water needed to extinguish the fire, reduces water damage and increases fire fighter safety through quicker knockdown and reduced mop-up/overhaul requirements.

WD881 is highly effective for fighting Class A fires when mixed with water at use rates of 0.1% to 1.0%. It has proven effectiveness in many applications including Compressed Air Foam Systems (CAFS), structural firefighting, forest fire suppression and prescribed burning, mine fires, industrial Class A fires, and for extinguishing hydrocarbon spill fires.http://phoschek.com/product-class/class-a-foam-for-wildland/

Ps There have been various formulations of retardants. Some have been changed due to ecological concerns.It has an interesting history too.
Also the retardant has a red or deep orange coloring added to it.
From my observations, and differently, ‘hydro seeding’ ( usually a mix of H2o, seed, and fertilizer is colored a very bright green. Usually as a spray on foam. This is often applied right after a fire to promote rapid growth of ground cover.

‘The red fire retardant dropped from planes may have aided in ending this and other wildfires, but it has sparked controversy. For years, opponents have decried the Forest Service’s use of these aerially applied chemicals, citing the negative impacts to the environment of the product’s main firefighting chemicals: ammonium phosphates. ‘
…
Ammonium phosphates have been deployed from the air to fight forest fires for nearly 50 years. But the idea of using these compounds to control fire is far older. Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, the French chemist and physicist who formulated a gas law that bears his name, first proposed the use of ammonium phosphates as flame retardants in 1821.https://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/89/8935cover.html

44 south

When I see my paddocks are green and growing in July and not frosted fawn and dormant AND I see a thrush collecting worms for it’s young, mid winter; THAT tells me all I need to know about just how far down this deadly path we are.

Cate

You illustrate a couple of points that are obvious, but I think sometimes forgotten or taken for granted, as we in the developed, urbanised world in particular respond to climate change:

1. it’s not just this or that big thing changing, or even a handful of big things. It’s all the millions of little changes going on around us in the natural world that together are raising a planet-sized red flag, or to use another figure of speech, sounding a global natural alarm.

2. our response to the flag, or to the alarm, depends on our being able to perceive it. We are lucky if we live in places where we can still observe nature and compare what’s happening now to what used to happen in the same place. For the bigger picture, and crucially, for the hundreds of millions of busy, urbanised folks, the science plays a crucial role: it must be their eyes and ears on nature.

A corollary: widespread urbanisation also behooves those of us who work with young people to take up the slack in promoting environmental education in our classrooms and community groups. It is essential that we support and expand all initiatives that aim to bring children back into an observant and empathetic relationship with nature with a view to increasing their awareness of climate change and their ability to respond to it.

Colorado Bob

Colorado Bob

Forests and bog land in far eastern Russia have been burning since the beginning of June 2012. Contributing to the record fires have been the record temperatures of this past summer. This summer in Siberia has been one of hottest on record. The average temperature ranged around 93 degrees Fahrenheit and there doesn’t seem to be any break in the weather coming anytime soon.

– Wildfires/carbon burning biomass in general — I wonder if any study has been done to compare the amount of carbon, and or ash, has been released from fires that burn more hotter and fiercely due to our controlling/dousing natural fires versus nature just letting them burn out.
Factor in the many anthropogenic accidental and purposeful fires. And AGW.
And the natural forest rejuvenation from natural fires.

Just something that came to mind when considering any fire relatrd carbon budget we try to wrap our minds around these days.
🙂

Greg

Drove through West Virginia this week on I-64 headed to the new national boy scout high adventure center at Bechtel Summit Reserve. This place is over 14,000 acres, and what struck me about this place, designed to accomodate up to 80,000 scouts and support, is that it is being built on a previous coal strip mine with a beautiful lake at the center of what was a large quarry. That was inspiring to see a new futute for a damaged land.
On the way there we took an exit to get some snacks and came upon a more and more common a new weird, a town near Sulfer Springs, the epicenter of the flood last week. Everything appeared normal at first but we quickly saw that it was abandoned, the Mcdonald’s, the gas station, the auto repair shop, etc. And then we saw grass stuck 8 feet up in the tree branches and then saw a semi in the creek. The flood had hit here. We found someone who had begun to clean up her store and we bought a bunch of stuff with cash to help her out since it would have spoiled as they had no water or electricity yet and she didn’t want handouts. She shared stories that were terrifying about how fast the waters rose from that little creek and filled the little valley. I sat my son down on the creek’s edge and had the talk with him firmly and confidently. This is climate change son. Don’t let anyone anywhere tell you otherwise. He’s 11. This town was built over generations that never witnessed that creek rise and fill the valley. He got it right there and then. At least 24 souls lost in that region last week, and the woman in that store? Her sister was waiting til the national guard arrived this weekend to get up the mountain and reach her kids, safe but trapped in their house with the only road washed out.

Griffin

Greg

Thank you Griffin and DT. I loved the people I met in West Virginia. They were so welcoming, friendly and proud. They are survivors. It was so clear that those who had hitched themselves to work centered on tourism/adventuring sports were fortunate. The coal areas are just abysmally poor and hard not to feel pity for. The spectacular New River gorge is not to be missed.

Colorado Bob

Torrential rain to last till Monday: meteorological authority
Thunderstorms are forecast to hit the provinces of Hubei, Anhui, Jiangsu, Hunan, Jiangxi, Guizhou and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region from Sunday morning to Monday morning, with precipitation reaching up to 220 millimeters in some areas……………… The province of Hubei, which is intersected by the lower-reaches of the Yangtze River, has been battered by rains for the past 3-days.

Colorado Bob

Exactly. I’d call the coverage entirely uneven. The level of scrutiny this blog receives demands top-notch scientific research with every post. That’s why I’m such a stickler. Because the media environment is ridiculously adversarial. Watts and these other guys get carte blanche to basically do what they want. Spencer featuring prominently in the WP article after the vast level of public disservice he’s committed? That’s what I’d call utter nonsense. Why even give that guy any more air time? It’s like a slightly off statement by me and a way out statement by PB is being used as a strawman to attack the notion of erosion of seasonality due to human forced climate change. Maybe Jason didn’t intend it that way. But that’s the way it’s being played.

Colorado Bob

They can say anything they want , But you have to be right every every key stoke . That’s not a bad place to be. As long as I’ve read you this only time you screwed the pooch. Watts and Goodard live in a oily dog whorehouse.

Well, the other thing is, if you’ve posted something incorrect and you find out that it’s incorrect — then correct it. If you have an opinion that you believe is correct — own it as your view, don’t represent it as the absolute god’s honest truth. Don’t double down on something that’s factually just wrong and just keep repeating it over and over again.

In any case, we’ve posted approx 950 blogs here. That’s in the range of 200 per year. Total word count is over 1.5 million. In other words equal to enough content to fill 3-4 book length volumes per year. Sysiphus had it easy.

Colorado Bob

Flash floods and landslides have killed at least 50 people in northern Pakistan and northern India, officials say.
Key points:

At least 43 killed in remote Pakistani village
More than 40 feared dead in India’s Uttarakhand state
Thousands believed to be stranded in India

At least 43 people were killed in Pakistan, most in a remote village that did not receive an evacuation warning before flash floods hit, washing away most of the settlement, officials said.

The heavy monsoon rains began late on Saturday and were concentrated mainly in the north-western province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which has been badly affected by flooding in recent years that some scientists have linked to climate change.

Colorado Bob

Some counties saw record-breaking daily rainfall during the past two days, local weather authorities said on Sunday.

Combined losses have been estimated at around $1.37 billion. Two rounds of rainstorms are forecast to hit southern regions over the next ten days. Nepartak, the first typhoon of the year, is expected to bring gales and downpours to eastern coastal areas next week.

Colorado Bob

In the spring of 1815, the Tambora volcano became much more active. On April 10, 1815, there was a massive eruption. The incredible roar of this explosion was heard over 1,000 miles away, and it created a tsunami that killed over 10,000 people around the Indian Ocean. Tambora spewed an overwhelming amount of volcanic ash, debris and gas into the atmosphere.

For reference, 38 cubic miles of volcanic ash were spewed into the atmosphere from Tambora, as opposed to .3 cubic miles from the Mt. St. Helens eruption, in Washington state, back in 1980.

The volcanic ash and, to a greater extent, sulfuric acid, blocked incoming solar radiation, resulting in a much cooler earth. The cold spells of 1816, lasting through the winter of 1817, were not confined to the U.S. It also turned very cold in western Europe and parts of Asia, leading to crop failures worldwide.

June 28, 2016 — As forest fires devastated Fort McMurray, Alberta, last month, a different sort of fire may have started beneath the ground. Peat, a carbon-rich soil created from partially decomposed, waterlogged vegetation accumulated over several millennia and the stuff that fueled Indonesia’s megafires last fall, also appears in the boreal forests that span Canada, Alaska and Siberia. With the intense heat from the Fort McMurray fires, “there’s a good chance the soil in the area could have been ignited,” says Adam Watts, a fire ecologist at Desert Research Institute in Nevada.

Unlike the dramatic wildfires near Fort McMurray, peat fires smolder slowly at a low temperature and spread underground, making them difficult to detect, locate and extinguish. They produce little flame and much smoke, which can become a threat to public health as the smoke creeps along the land and chokes nearby villages and cities.

This was a key reason so many Russians died in 2010. Moscow was once surrounded by these peat bogs. During the 20th century the Soviet government drained them , and there they sat until that summer when 58,000 Russians died , because the air was packed in this toxic soup of poorly com-busted gases, everyone with a lung problem got wiped out.

Colorado Bob

I have read reports from Canadian fire fighters where the fire burns over 2 meters into the ground.

As we all think about the tundra/boreal forest , and it’s release of methane and Co2 from thawing and bacterial action. There is this fire path way that happens very fast , like Centralia , Penn. where the fire never dies.

The thaw in the Arctic is a multi act event.

And as DTL posted recently about Alaska, lighting is coming to the Arctic.

My dear friend, it’s the only real job in the world for me. Best or worst, it is just something that absolutely must be done.

30 C temps predicted for both Yamal and Canadian Archipelago within 3-4 days. West Antarctic coastline near Thwaites Glacier to hit 0.4 C in Winter today. All are in the +17-20 C or more above the already hotter than normal ‘average’ range.

Cate

30C in the North?? Say it ain’t so, RS! and out here on the Eastern Edge we’re still hovering around 12C to 15C when we’re supposed to be more like 20C +. Daytime temp is forecast to dip to 9C this week. In JULY. I hate to say it, but this is setting up for a repeat of last year’s record cold, damp July—we had warmer weather in February 2016 than July 2015. We went on to have decent summer weather in August through September. My experienced gardener friends are shaking their heads. The seasons are well out of kilter.

That’s what GFS indicated last night in the nullschool monitor for the July 6 to July 8 time horizon. Same showing up in reanalyzer which uses the same model forecast baseline. Yamal was the location for the contraversial blowholes. The place is basically set to broil in the forecast.

Syd Bridges

Yes, CB, it was the Amur flood story that first bought me to Robert’s blog too. As I was reading the story, I realized that moisture from four oceans was contributing to one huge flood disaster. Something I wouldn’t have thought possible until I read that article.. Since then, I’ve been an avid reader, both of the articles and the many, many informative comments and linked articles.

Robert correctly called the huge El Nino, the rise of wildfires, the weather extremes, and the decline of the polar jet stream. What he has described is the reality we are seeing. I certainly cannot say the same for Dr. Roy Spencer.

So I just want to thank everyone for the outpouring of support. I also want to reassure you guys that the efforts here will only be redoubled. For my own part, criticism and even ad hominem attacks are not something that I fear. In fact, it’s to be expected given the currently fractious media environment. One in which fossil fuel special interests still have an oversized influence.

The important thing to remember is that there is a very strong need to raise public awareness on this issue. Some seem to think that open discussion regarding the murky viscititudes of CC risk is irresponsible. But my view is that it is an absolutely necessary aspect of generating a broad response. We do not limit discussion of risk based on extreme weather to science back rooms, so why should we do so with climate change? In the end, if you hide the risk from public view, then people, cities and states will be caught unawares, unprepared, and disenabled to mitigate and respond to what is an ultimately catastrophic future rapid warming scenario.

So yes, there is every responsible reason to carry on. We have only begun to write.

Every so often a book comes along that changes the way you view the world. The War on Science: Who’s Waging It, Why It Matters, What We Can Do About It by Shawn Otto is one of those rare books. If you care about attacks on climate science and the rise of authoritarianism, if you care about biased media coverage or shake-your-head political tomfoolery, this book is for you.

Cate

>>>>>> Located southeast of Vancouver, the 30-square-kilometre nature reserve is one of North America’s largest peat bogs, and the fire can get under the dry peat where it will burn out of sight.
“If a fire gets underground in that peat, it can run a long way and pop up somewhere else. So it’s a very major concern in that regard,” said Delta Mayor Lois Jackson.
It’s not the first time Jackson has witnessed a major fire in the area. She was mayor in 2005, when a blaze in Burns Bog grew to more than two square kilometres and took more than a week to put out.<<<<<<<<>>>One firefighter was hospitalized “due to a medical condition aggravated by the environment at the scene of the fire,” the town of Delta said in an online statement. <<<<<

Cate

Hmmm, that got a bit mashed. It left out my point that peat fires are very smoky, and hence very dangerous, not only for anyone downwind but for the firefighters as well, one of whom was sent to hospital because of “the environment at the scene of the fire.”

– What they have is a peat bog/urban interface — or some such. Entire communities built upon or adjacent to the peat.
I remember seeing those type smoke/fires burning in Delta — wet soggy flat areas with billowing smoke plume.
With weak winds, or an inversion layer, smoke just condenses…

– Interesting that the place is basically a terraced alluvial plain (Fraser River) with wise pockets of peat bog.
And, barely above sea leavel, Vancouver airport and its long flat runways is right nearby.

Barring some incredible new carbon capture technology, the window for limiting global warming to less than 1.5C appears to have closed. That’s the stark conclusion of a report out in Nature today, which finds that the carbon reductions pledges penned into the Paris Agreement are ridiculously inadequate for keeping our climate within a safe and stable boundary.

Kevin Jones

Cate

June

Looking at Climate Reanalyzer, it is rather mind-boggling to see the SST anomalies around the arctic…the Barents Sea, Labrador Sea, and especially the Bering Sea which has been getting warmer and warmer and is now a cherry red. (I tried to copy the image but it didn’t seem to work).

Shawn Redmond

Cate

Shawn, yeah, thanks, I’m reading the blues as below average anomalies, but those temps might still be within an expected or “normal” range of lowness, if you get my drift? That’s what I was getting at… 🙂

Shawn Redmond

Cate

Average vs normal: I’m not using these words scientifically so we may bet getting wires crossed. Different example: say the weather records have established that the “average” summer daytime temp here is 19C. Records also show that most summer days, temps range between about 16C and 23C—so most people would consider these to be “normal” temps for the season (the range might be a bit arbitrary). A temp of 17C would thus be interpreted as “below average” in a strict sense, but still within the “normal” range. A temp of 10C would be way below normal as well as below average. So I’m just wondering what’s the case for those SSTs in the Atlantic. They are below average, yes. But are they below normal, in terms of what past SST data could lead us to expect? Possibly not. I dunno. 😀

There’s a periodic cooling and warming of waters called the North Atlantic Oscillation. Departure from baseline will be determined by where you draw the line. In the context of human forced climate change, it would be most responsible to draw the line as far back as possible since GHG started adding heat forcing circa the late 19th Century.

It’s also worth noting that the big 2012 surface melt pulse should probably be added in to the current calculation. Measurements taken at any given time should be understood in light of that temporal context.

“Extreme weather events have become more frequent over the past 40 to 50 years, and this trend is projected to continue,” the report said. “Climate change is expected to have a significant effect on communities, including those in West Virginia. For instance, more frequent intense precipitation events may translate into more frequent flash flooding episodes.”

Shawn Redmond

I can’t remember which Gwynne Dyer book I read it in, but the west went to Ethiopia during the first famine in the seventies and taught the population better farming practices to feed them selves. For the 40 million at the time it worked well.They didn’t teach them anything about family planning and the new drought comes as predicted it would. Just worsened buy ACD and now there are 80 million to try and feed! ( P.S. it may have been climate wars but not sure, I’ve read most of his writing and as always I’ve passed the books along.)

Cate

Shawn, oh yes, Gwynne Dyer is pretty awesome. RS. are you familiar with him? Gwynne is a military historian, PhD from Kings College London, taught at Sandhurst, now a journalist—-and he’s a Newfoundlander. 😀

In a recent interview about ISIS, he was asked if militant Islamist terrorism scares him. He said no, only one thing scares him, and it scares the shit out of him, and that’s climate change.

Colorado Bob

Schimel said the death of the trees was caused by a number of factors, related to climate change.

“These are trees that have been stressed by heat and a lack of water for a number years,” he said. “Some of them died of a lack of water and others died from insects and plants. Trees would normally be resistant to such threats but the drought weakens them.”

He also said that the map points to what could represent a permanent change in the landscape of the region.

“The drought has some momentum, there could be a wave of mortality that continues for the next several years,” he said. “The biggest concern here is that the trees that are dying are decades old or even centuries old, and this mortality rate means that the Sierras will be changed during our lifetimes and our kids’ lifetimes.”

Colorado Bob

Wellington — If you’ve booked a ski holiday in the lower parts of the Southern Hemisphere this winter, you better start praying for snow. While SA’s snow-hubs are adding to the natural snowfall with their machine-made flakes, natural ski fields are struggling to open in New Zealand after the first six months of 2016 proved to be the hottest start to a year that scientists have ever recorded.

Temperatures in the South Pacific nation were 1.4°C above the long-term average for the first half of the year, according to the government-funded National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research.

It was also one of the sunniest, with sunshine hours up more than 100 per cent across the country thanks to the dry weather.

The statistics come from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa), which today released its climate summary for June.

It said much like May, the warmer than usual ocean surrounding the country not only contributed to unseasonable warmth on land but also created an environment that was more conducive for strong storms.”

My bosses are heading to the South Is for a pre-booked skiing holiday tomorrow. He made need to change his plans & just go wine tasting instead!

Colorado Bob

On 1 July Ulan-Ude experienced its highest ever temperature on this day – a tropical 33.8C – causing a performance of the Republic of Buryatia’s first national opera to be cut almost in half because of the stifling heat.

Unprecedented high temperatures, up to 6C higher than average, have also hit Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk regions. Siberia’s coldest region – the Sakha Republic, also known as Yakutia – also experienced a highly unusual heatwave.

Jay M

June

I hope I am not out of line for posting this link, but since it is the 4th of July I thought Scribblers would appreciate this essay from 2006 by one of my heroes, the late Howard Zinn.

Patriotism and the Fourth of July
By Howard Zinn

The Declaration of Independence gives us the true meaning of a patriot, someone who supports a country’s ideals, not necessarily its government…

Should we not begin to redefine patriotism? We need to expand it beyond that narrow nationalism that has caused so much death and suffering. If national boundaries should not be obstacles to trade- some call it “globalization”-should they also not be obstacles to compassion and generosity?

June

Torrential monsoon rains along a stalled frontal boundary near the Yangtze River in China have killed 186 people, left 45 people missing, and caused at least $7.6 billion in damage. In the Hubei Province, 1.5 million people have been evacuated or are in need of aid, almost 9,000 houses have collapsed or are seriously damaged and more than 710,000 hectares of crops have been affected…

Harsh weather conditions forced Sen. Jim Inhofe to land his plane, which subsequently ran off the runway, Sunday evening during a recreational flight near Grand Lake.

Inhofe, 81, was flying the plane near Ketchum with another pilot in a separate plane when inclement weather approached and forced the two to land in difficult conditions…
The area was under a severe thunderstorm watch…

– ” … Huntington Beach, Playa Del Rey, Venice and Long Beach were all transformed by the oil boom of the 1920s and ’30s. The oil companies made the money, not the residents. Schools closed, the Venice “Grand Canal” was so full of oil it reportedly caught on fire on more than one occasion. By the 1990s, it was all over. the State Lands Commission denied City of Los Angeles permit applications for slant drilling under the bay, and the shore fields were mostly played out. ”

– Oh yeah, here’s the reply from Gavin Schmidt re ‘It’s often worth thinking about spread of opinion on climate change.”.
Don’t know why I didn’t post it right off – it became part of the Twitter universe as soon as it Tweeted.

Gavin Schmidt ‏@ClimateOfGavin Jul 2

@DavidLange2 I’m pretty close to the IPCC in aggregate but there are some impacts that they can’t quantify & so have higher risk #@mtobis

Andy in SD

East Africa is already the hungriest place on Earth: One in every three people live without sufficient access to nutritious food, according to the United Nations. Crop yields in the region are the lowest on the planet. African farms have one-tenth the productivity of Western farms on average, and sub-Saharan Africa is the only placeon the planet where per capita food production is actually falling.

Now, climate change threatens to compound those problems by raising temperatures and disrupting the seasonal rains on which many farmers depend.

Colorado Bob

Last month was the hottest June on record in Death Valley National Park, with a sweltering average temperature of 101.9 degrees. June 2016’s temperatures exceeded average June temperatures by about 6 degrees.

The average of 95.5 degrees had been recorded over the past 105 years. Official weather observations have been recorded at Furnace Creek since 1911.

Death Valley’s average daily high temperature this June was 115.5 degrees and the average overnight low was 88.2 degrees. In spite of a record-setting average temperature, Death Valley only set a new daily record one day last month, with 126 degrees recorded on June 21.

– Sidenote though most likely for other locations: Brings to mind something that happens as the heat rises with some force it en-trains ground level air pollution and carries it aloft to mix with other parts of the atmosphere.
I came to this sort of conclusion after studying AP behaviors in Santa Barbara and So Cal Bight especially the bowl at southern end of the chronically hot and polluted Central Valley.

Colorado Bob

NASA Earth Observatory, July 5, 2016
El Niño conditions in 2015 and early 2016 altered rainfall patterns around the world. In the Amazon basin, El Niño reduced rainfall during the wet season, leaving the region drier at the start of the 2016 dry season than any year since 2002.
“Severe drought conditions at the start of the dry season have set the stage for extreme fire risk in 2016 across the southern Amazon,” said Doug Morton, an Earth scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and a co-creator of the fire forecast. The wildfire risk for July to October now exceeds the fire risk in 2005 and 2010—drought years when wildfires burned large swaths of the rainforest.

Colorado Bob

BEIJING, July 3 (Xinhua) — Continuous rainfall over the past two weeks in parts of China has left at least 61 people dead and 14 others missing, local authorities said Sunday. ………………………………… Over 17 million people have been affected by the rain in the two provinces, with 974,000 people relocated. The rain also destroyed over 400,000 rooms and affected 1.4 million hectares of crops.

Cate

This seems to me to be a looming threat in northern wildfires (eg Canada and Russia), as so much of our northern vegetation consists of bog, which is common in my neck of the woods—it’s hard to imagine they can dry out enough to burn like this.

Spike

A sobering paleoclimate article which gets us back to the urgency of action. Something new to me in this:

“I published a paper with Gifford Miller in Quaternary Science Reviews that tried to look at Arctic amplification versus global mean temperature. Here we suggest that using paleoclimate data for different times in the past, it seems that Arctic summer temperature tends to be 3-4 times as large as the global change (see figure 4).”

Colorado Bob

It’s a turtle tragedy. Tumours are crippling an increasing number of green sea turtles on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, with pollution being investigated as the prime culprit.

The animals have a turtle-specific herpesvirus that causes fibropapillomatosis – a condition in which disfiguring tumours grow on the eyes, flippers, tail, shell or internal organs.

“The tumours are benign but can grow up to 30 centimetres in size and block the turtles’ vision, says Karina Jones of James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. “This means they can’t find food or see predators or boats.”

Turtles with tumours are also more vulnerable to other infections, she says. “Severely affected turtles are quite skinny and have other pathogens affecting them – that’s why they die.”

“… between 1973 and 1982, the number of large fires in the west has increased more than 500 percent across the region and the area burned has increased more than 1,200 percent. But certain areas have seen a much larger uptick – the area burned in the northern Rockies is up 3,000 percent and in the Northwest, 5,000 percent.’

“… they are also starting to see another trend that wasn’t visible in their research a decade ago. The areas burned by large fires are now increasing not just in mountain forests but also in grass and shrublands at lower elevations.

“Our review of historical data demonstrates how closely linked drier years and earlier springs are to the frequency of wildfires,” Westerling wrote. “Given projections for further drying in the West due to human-induced warming, this study points to a future with more wildfire activity.”

Colorado Bob

Professional science organizations’ calling on Republican lawmakers to stop questioning climate science is a “a blatant misuse of scientific authority,” according to a prominent climate scientist.

“This statement is a blatant misuse of scientific authority to advocate for specific socioeconomic policies,” Judith Curry, a Georgia Tech climate scientist, wrote of a letter sent by dozens of scientific groups to Congress last week.

– A bit odd, this one. It’s been on Twitter and is proving quite sticky. I think it’s more a distraction than anything — and sound a bit ‘trolly’. Some say it’s good that it’s being talked about though.

Yes, I’d endorse that characterization. She’s been moving steadily farther and farther from mainstream science for several years now. My guess is, she’s been angling for a position in a Republican Administration.

12volt dan

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday reiterated his opposition to the route of Enbridge Inc’s (ENB.TO) Northern Gateway oil pipeline, casting further doubt on the prospects of a project fiercely opposed by environmentalists.

Canada’s former Conservative government had approved Northern Gateway, which would carry oil from the Alberta oil sands to a port in British Columbia for export.

But Trudeau, elected last year, has said he opposed the pipeline. His Liberal government has promised a moratorium on oil tanker traffic along the coast of northern British Columbia, a policy seen making the pipeline unfeasible